Skip to main content
Main

Legs of Turkey-hen, Italian Fashion

Stuffed turkey legs filled with forcemeat, truffles, ham, and bacon, baked and served on risotto with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Legs of Turkey-hen, Italian Fashion

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone the turkey legs, leaving a bit of bone for handles.

  2. Fill with poultry forcemeat mixed with truffles and ham.

  3. Sew them into the shape of a ballotine and wrap in bacon.

Poach and shape

  1. Boil in white stock until cooked.

  2. Let cool slightly with a weight on top, then untruss.

  3. Warm gently, basting with reduced cooking stock.

Glaze and serve

  1. Drain on a baking sheet, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and baste with melted butter.

  2. Glaze in a hot oven and add a ruffle to the ends of the bones.

  3. Serve on a pyramid of risotto with brown sauce on the side.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Truffle + hamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Turkey + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together822 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey legs
Provide the main meat, which is boned and wrapped around the stuffing.
Poultry forcemeat
Forms a firm, moist stuffing that sets as the legs cook.
Bacon
Wraps the stuffed legs, adding fat and savoury flavour as it renders.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust during the final glaze in the oven.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the crumb crust brown.

The step that matters

Glaze in a hot oven. The crumb and butter coating needs high dry heat to brown without drying out the meat beneath. Watch closely, since the coating can scorch before the filling is heated through.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesTurkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes